Impersonal Haver, Fazer, Ser

Some Portuguese verbs run without a subject. There is nobody and nothing performing the action — the verb just sits there in the third person singular and reports a fact about the world: that something exists, that time has passed, or that the weather is doing something. These are impersonal verbs (verbos impessoais), and the three you meet first are haver (existence), fazer (elapsed time and weather), and ser (clock time). For an English speaker the tricky part is not the meaning but the missing subject: English props these sentences up with the dummy word it or there ("it is hot," "there are three of them"), and Portuguese simply does not.

Haver — "there is / there are"

The verb haver in its impersonal use means there is or there are. It is frozen in the third person singular — há — and, crucially, it never agrees with what follows. Whether one thing exists or a million things exist, you use há, never hão.

This non-agreement is the single most important fact about impersonal haver, because it is exactly where the agreement instinct of an English speaker (or a Spanish speaker) leads you astray. The thing that exists is the direct object of haver, not its subject — so it cannot trigger plural agreement. Há três cadeiras is correct; hão três cadeiras is wrong.

But Brazilians reach for "tem" first

Here is the fact no textbook printed in Portugal will tell you clearly: in everyday Brazilian speech, há sounds bookish. Brazilians overwhelmingly use tem (literally has) for existence in conversation.

Both Tem muita gente na praia and Há muita gente na praia mean the same thing. The first is what a Brazilian says out loud; the second is what they write in a report or read in a newspaper. Há is not wrong in speech — it is simply formal, and using it constantly in casual conversation marks you as someone reading from a book.

Note that impersonal tem, like há, stays singular: Tem muitas pessoas, never Têm muitas pessoas, when it means there are. (The form têm with the circumflex is the genuinely plural "they have," a different sentence entirely.)

Haver and fazer for elapsed time

Both haver and fazer express time elapsed — "ago" or "for (a period)." With this meaning they are again impersonal and frozen in the singular.

In speech, faz is the natural choice ("faz três anos"), and há is the more written, formal alternative for the same idea ("há três anos"). Both are invariable: even though it is three years, you say faz três anos, not fazem três anos, in standard usage. (You will hear fazem três anos in casual speech, but careful writers treat it as an error precisely because the verb is impersonal.)

Fazer for weather

Fazer is also the impersonal verb of weather. Where English says "it is hot," Portuguese says faz calor — literally "(it) makes heat," with no subject at all.

The pattern is fazer + noun: faz calor (heat), faz frio (cold), faz sol (sun), faz vento (wind). Because the weather word is a noun, you intensify it with muito modifying that noun ("a lot of heat") — faz muito calor, "it's very hot" — rather than with an adjective, the way you would in está muito quente ("it's very hot," of a specific object). A common beginner reflex is to translate "it's hot" as está quente, which is grammatical but means a specific object is hot to the touch (the coffee, the stove). For the ambient weather, Brazilians say faz calor or, very commonly in casual speech, simply tá calor / está calor.

Ser for clock time

The verb that tells the clock time is ser, and here — unlike the others — the verb does agree, because the hours behave like a plural subject.

The rule is mechanical: one hour takes the singular é (é uma hora), and two or more hours take the plural são (são duas horas, são oito horas). Midday and midnight (meio-dia, meia-noite) are singular: é meio-dia. This agreement feels backwards to English speakers, who use a single frozen it is for every time. In Portuguese, the time is the subject, so it controls the verb.

When you say at a time, you contract a + as → às: O voo sai às sete da manhã ("the flight leaves at seven a.m."). The grave accent on às is obligatory and marks that contraction.

Common Mistakes

These are the errors English speakers make most often, because English forces a subject (it, there) into every one of these sentences and Portuguese has none.

Key Takeaways

• Existence: spoken BR uses tem (Tem gente), written BR uses há (Há gente). Both stay singular.
• Elapsed time / "ago": spoken BR uses faz (Faz dois anos), written BR uses há. Both stay singular.
• Weather: always faz + noun (faz calor, faz frio), never faz
  • adjective.
• Clock time: ser, and it does agree — é uma hora but são três horas; at a time is às.